BRATTLEBORO — On election night, a bunch of friends gathered at a party in Brattleboro, probably the bluest town in the bluest state in the country, seemingly to celebrate Hillary Clinton's win.
One friend had bought a Donald Trump piñata months earlier and filled it with Dum Dum lollipops; the plan was to bash that thing to smithereens once Clinton won.
As the night wore on, we left the party one by one to go home to go to sleep, hoping that what we were seeing was not reality.
But we woke up and found ourselves firmly in a new kind of waking nightmare.
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For over two months, we have struggled to put words to what happened, and what might happen, and each time we try, words do not suffice.
We watch one another try to say something that shifts our understanding, but no words can make this thing right.
We are stunned, disbelieving, and - most of all - deeply shaken and scared.
We try to make sense of some of the most basic truths that have been violated - truths that stretch back to our very first moral lessons in preschool: tell the truth, do not hit others, bullies aren't allowed in the playground.
We wonder about whether this is the death knell for the climate, our planet, the world.
And we inevitably touch on how many people have been moved to action by this election, and how money to organizations opposed to Trump's agenda is pouring in. Perhaps this could be a good thing in the end, we say wanly.
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Already, the press is wanting to diminish, deflate, and divide us and this action: Why not do something more substantive? The march is doomed to failure. The factions of women are cat-fighting: the white pussies aren't playing well with the black and calico pussies.
So why get on a bus on Friday night and ride over 12 hours to march for a day and then get back on the bus and return to Brattleboro at 3 a.m. on Sunday? Why, at my age, and with work on Monday, subject myself to this?
But here's the thing: this is going to be the largest women's march on Washington since 1913, when women marched to get the vote.
And here's the other thing.
I am old enough to have lived through a time when I experienced the kind of entrenched sexism and misogyny that Trump has so impulsively and recklessly shown the world.
I remember not being allowed to wear pants to a public elementary school. And my mother not being able to get a credit card in her name when she divorced my father in the 1970s. And on and on and on.
I am the mother of two daughters, and I will not let anyone take back our hard-earned rights.
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Last weekend, a group of women gathered to create inauguration paraphernalia and signs to take to the march.
Some of us sat on the couch and knitted the pussy hats that thousands of women plan to wear during the protest. Others struggled to find just the right phrase or slogan to carry: “You can't comb over hate,” “Make America think again.”
Ultimately, when words fail us, actions count. When words fail us and outrage overtakes us, we must gather, laugh, and be near one another, united in our resolve to do something.
We unite in love to stand up to hate. If the foxes at Fox news can speak up, why not us pussies?
I am bringing the Trump piñata on the bus. Will we smash it open at some point? Isn't it against all we are trying to do and say to smash it during the march? Won't such a violent act just incite violence?
Or will we bring it back intact so that we can celebrate again in four years?
Either way, I am going.
I am taking action, with thousands of other outraged women.